The winning bid for the Guanghan Line can only be regarded as a part. The interests of the www.biquge.info grain trade are so great, and the influence is needless to say, and it is not possible to let go of this line in Fujian and Guangdong, not just the Guanghan line.

Chen Ming felt that this 'exchange of interests' involved a lot of things.

Fujian and Guangdong itself are not important grain producing places, the land there is all planted with cash crops, especially after the invention of canning, these warm climate Lingnan land, large and small fruit canning factories are not too many.

Wealthy and powerful officials from Fujian and Guangdong do not grow grain in the first place, and once foreign grain begins to be subject to customs tariffs, it is conceivable how great the stimulating effect will be on Lingnan, the region with the lowest grain prices in the country.

And the Lingnan interests that have paid the price of such sacrifices will definitely not be small in what they want.

Although Chen Ming didn't get specific information for a while, after finalizing the proposition of 'interest exchange', he had already seen everything he wanted to 'see'.

What Chen Ming sees is the cohesion of the whole country behind the issue of 'increasing grain tariffs'.

This power comes not only from the traditional agricultural powerhouses of the Two Lakes and the Huanghuai, but also from the economically prosperous economies of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, and the entire chain of interests is interlinked, and the government, business and people are likely to be related to the whole of China.

This force is so huge, Chen Ming will not openly go against their will.

This matter only gave Chen Ming a little shock, and the driving force of interests was too big and too heavy. Unexpectedly, the interests of the north, south, east and west were self-deploying traffic, Chen Ming didn't think that this day would come, but he didn't expect it to be so fast.

Perhaps these transactions are just unremarkable reports in the newspapers, but in Chen Ming's eyes, they represent a different meaning.

In the face of powerful obstacles, in the face of difficult and difficult to conquer the 'enemy', Lingnan, Lianghu, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Huanghuai and other interest communities did not think about how to tear apart and deal with each other, but turned to communicate with each other, exchange with each other, and seek common ground while reserving differences. Chen Ming feels that this is a manifestation of 'maturity'.

And this 'maturity' is the maturity he desires. There is cooperation between different interest groups, instead of pulling each other apart and tearing each other apart.

Even behind the scenes, there will definitely be no shortage of people coming and going with each other, but in front of the stage, he can put on a cooperative look, and push forward the operation of society under the impetus of a common interest, which is what Chen Ming longs for.

Because in his mind, China's future road will definitely follow the bourgeois line, and these economic communities are the hotbeds of parties. Although Chen Ming is very willing to have one party in the whole country, and then there can be a faction within the party, and there can be a mountain in the faction, these are all allowed. But he did not dare to guarantee that his wishful thinking would really be carried out, and when a bourgeois party was truly born in China a few decades later, he was not sure that China would really be able to be a one-party dictatorship.

Moreover, regardless of whether it is one party or multiple parties, as a politician, learning to 'seek common ground while reserving differences' and learning to 'compromise' is a very basic and basic internal factor for politicians in the later era of bourgeoisie. But it is also a very scarce and lacking element in traditional Chinese culture.

If the domestic interest community can understand this as soon as possible, Chen Ming is very happy.

The world is changing, and politics is changing accordingly.

In the eyes of Chinese politicians in the past, the whole world was an acre of three-part land in East Asia, Yunnan and Guizhou were completely won in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and Hubei's Tusi Yongzheng period collapsed.

Perhaps due to the limitations of the times, in the traditional agrarian society, the territory of the empire could not be expanded indefinitely. However, China's traditional culture made the vigorous Central Empire not allow the existence of semi-independent forces like feudal towns on its borders, which made historical China seem very unenterprising for a long time, and the immutable social environment was unable to promote political change.

Perhaps the traditional Chinese emperor would be worried that the power in his hands would be threatened, but Chen Ming knew that his imperial power would be divided if he continued like this, and on the other hand, he still made unwavering strides forward. That's the biggest difference between a traverser and an indigenous.

At the end of November, the administrative order to increase the grain import tariff was officially issued, with a tax rate of 15%, a tax rate that is neither high nor low, and a data after a long period of negotiation and compromise.

Commercial interests affect national politics, and no matter how many people put it in a lofty name, to put it bluntly, it is still a real economic benefit.

Because it was a cold winter, winter was supposed to be a time when China's grain prices were high, and as soon as this news was released throughout the country, food prices were immediately rising all over the country.

Although the preferential policy on grain imports was abolished and a 15 percent tariff was imposed, it was not implemented until the eighth year of Chengtian next year. But before the golden wind moved the cicada, the huge influence has stimulated all provinces across the country.

Chen Ming watched all this quietly. He likes to see these changes, and at the same time, one of his ears is also closely following the progress of new guns and new developments in China's science and technology.

Once again, Chen Ming's guns were alarmed, but they were not Nimi rifles or front-loading rifled guns, but real breech-loading guns.

With thundermercury, there is a primer. Of course, a needle-shot breech gun can be done, and a breech gun can, will the breech gun be far away? At least five rifled front-loading guns were manufactured by Chinese military factories two years earlier, but after a long period of test firing, the results were not ideal.

The new features of the front-loading rifled gun - multi-rifling, lead-coated and reloading design are quite complex and inefficient. Despite its power, its high price makes it unsuitable for mass production and equipping troops.

And there is also the problem that the rifled guns do have a long range and excellent shelling accuracy, but the targets that the latter aim at are within the line of sight of the naked eye. In real battles, the range of artillery is not as far as possible. Because the artillery of this era did not have a pair of 'eagle eyes' that matched it.

Modern artillery has an increasingly long range, and that is based on modern systems of penetration, aiming and fire control. Chen Han now relies on people, human eyes and human brains to calculate the shooting elements, and if the range of the cannon is too long, it is useless. Because I can't hit it accurately!

No matter how powerful it is, it's useless.

The effective range of today's artillery can guarantee two thousand meters, which is enough to cope with everything. Such a gun was installed on a battleship, and because of its stability, even if the effective range was reduced by half, the firing range of 1,000 meters was unimaginable to many naval guns now.

The British Royal Navy in the 18th ~ 19th century shooting doctrine clearly stipulates that the maximum firing distance of the 24-pounder cannon is 400 yards, so the actual combat of this era in the two sides of the warships are often within 100 meters.

Chen Ming didn't need a cannon that was too far away, but a cannon with the right size, range, accuracy, and rate of fire. It can ensure that the Chinese naval division can still fire outside the range of the rocket and hit the enemy after the rocket leaks.

In fact, the effective range of 2,000 meters is an ideal distance, and Chen Ming feels that this distance is very appropriate.

And when Chen Han's military-industrial system also conquered this 'goal', it did have results, that is, rifled guns.

With a rifled cannon, it is like the difference between a smoothbore gun and a rifled gun, not to mention that the range has increased by leaps and bounds, and the accuracy has also increased greatly. It's just that the manufacturing process is really complicated, and the cost of each cannon is much higher than that of smoothbore guns.

The most important thing is that it also has various faults and deficiencies such as explosive chambering, jamming, and slow shooting.

"Since the range requirements are not high, we can reduce the barrel of the gun to save its weight and manufacturing costs."

"The use of breech-loading rifled guns has a great advantage for our army now, that is, the shells used in rifled guns are pointed instead of traditional round shells. The pointed projectile is not only more stable than a round bullet when flying in the air, but also because of its shape -- it is elongated, the body can be developed backwards, and the weight can be adjusted under the same caliber. The caliber of the former is only about 70% of that of the latter. That is, with the same large caliber, the rifled gun is much more powerful than the smoothbore gun, even if no other external factors are considered. Considering the low resistance of the conical projectile in the air, the piercing power of the projectile can reach five times that of a round projectile with the same weight. ”

"That is, our army's rifled five-pound cannon can be compared to the smoothbore eight-pound cannon in the past, and the power is at least the level of the smoothbore ten-pound gun."

"In actual combat, the small warships of our naval division are enough to compete with the medium-sized warships of the Europeans, and the medium-sized warships can challenge the large warships of Europe." Coupled with the advantage in effective firing range, as well as the advantage in rate of fire -- the small shells will certainly have an advantage -- the result is that the large European sail battleships will not only be helpless against the smaller Chinese naval warships, but will also be very likely to be raped and defeated by the Japanese.

This is a voice within the military-industrial system in favor of rifled guns.

However, the rifled rear-loading gun locking design they manufactured was very complex, with low stability and high failure rate. It's a pity that Chen Ming can only put forward an opinion on this with a threaded cannon latch, which is a cannon latch mode used in many artillery pieces in later generations. When the latch is closed, the threads on the latch body are engaged with the corresponding threads on the inner surface of the gun tail. The threaded surface of the latch is divided into even-numbered sections, and the threads are cut every other section. The threads on the inner surface of the tail are treated in the same way, except that the section of the thread that is cut off is exactly staggered from the section of the thread that is cut off on the latch. When closing the latch through the shank, the latch rotates in an arc until the threads on the latch and the gun tail are fully engaged. This form of thread is known as the "break" thread or "slotted" thread and is the most commonly used thread on modern screw gun latches. The pitch of such a thread must ensure that sufficient friction is created to prevent the latch body from turning or opening during artillery fire. In order to release and open the bolt body with a single pressure on the latch, the bolt also needs to be equipped with some form of transmission.

Then it was to express his moral support to the researchers of a breech-loading rifled gun.

Their words are indeed very incredible, but they can't do it.

The most important thing about artillery is not range and accuracy, but reliability and ease of large-scale equipment. And this is precisely not the condition that the current breech-loading rifled guns can meet.

Moreover, when firing, the five rear-loading rifled guns were not well adhered to the hot-dip lead and iron, and the tear-off lead fragments would be scattered in front of the muzzle for a short distance to cause damage to their own soldiers.

The reason why the tip of the rifled gun is lead-plated is to embed the shell body in the rifling, and the cast iron or steel is too hard to wear out the rifling. So even modern shells are steel bodies (the diameter is smaller than the inner diameter of the rifling) and copper belts (the diameter is slightly larger and can be embedded in the rifling).

The pointed projectile produced by Chen Han was made of cast iron, covered with lead, and used a simple bump fuse, with black explosives inside and black powder packets as propellants. In the plane of proto-space, until the second half of the 19th century, the shells of the Western powers were also at this level.

However, at present, Chen Han's steel smelting level is definitely not as strong as that of the Western powers at that time.

Naturally, the overall performance of the cannons produced could not be compared with that time, or at all. Chen Ming still compares horizontally, and compares it with the city where Europeans developed firearms in this era, and find confidence.

Chen Ming does not take the initiative to interfere with the decision of the military industrial system, and now Chen Han has the capital to plant his head in the manufacture of firearms. Sometimes, it can be a valuable experience.

By the end of the year, what really surprised Chen Ming was the steel industry, which had been attached to the Ministry of Mines, and had been honestly expanding China's steel production over the years, building one coal and iron base after another in the country.

But now, the surprise he brought to Chen Ming was jumping.

When Chen Han's situation stabilized, Chen Ming was no longer satisfied with ironmaking, nor was he satisfied with crucible steel, he hoped to be able to make steel directly and produce steel on a larger scale.

But Chen Ming really doesn't have much to contribute to steelmaking, except for regenerative furnaces and gas.

Any ironmaking furnace that uses coal or coke produces a large amount of gas, which has always been discharged directly from the top of the furnace, and the flames of the gas combustion are very spectacular at night, which is a serious waste of energy and polluting the environment from the perspective of the 21st century.

This phenomenon lasted until the thirties of the 19th century, when a German ironworks first piped gas to a regenerative furnace for heating, and various methods could raise the hot air to more than 500 degrees Celsius.

When the supply air is raised to more than 300 degrees Celsius and then fed into the iron-making furnace, the iron output of the same amount of fuel is three times higher than that of cold blast.

As soon as this proved useful, the Ministry of Mines was very interested, as they felt that the technology could be used not only in ironmaking and steelmaking, but also in refining other metals.

After much experimentation, they found a way. It is a cast iron tubular hot blast stove.

The cold air passes through the upper branch of the blast main to each furnace, and through the arched cast iron pipe located over the fire, it enters the tube on the other side of the heat exchanger chamber, and then enters the air outlet of the furnace. When the wind is directly heated, the temperature can rise to 300 degrees Celsius, which is enough to melt the lead. However, this is not enough for the Ministry of Mines to be satisfied, and the follow-up improvement experiments are still in progress, but the hot air at high temperature will cause damage to the air supply outlet of the iron melting furnace, which must be protected.

While this surprise has its drawbacks, its importance to steel production is clear. Before the follow-up improvement was completed, Chen Ming took the lead in awarding the gold medal to the research group. This is really a great progress in China's metallurgy!